Ron Paul Is Mitt Romney’s Best Friend. Here’s Why.

Ever wonder why Ron Paul, the anti-establishment Republican, the hater of “ObamaCare”, the darling of hard-core conservatives and free-market libertarians as well as those progressives who actually think he means what he says about upholding the Constitution, hasn’t laid a glove on Mitt “RomneyCare” Romney since the start of the primaries?

With Paul still in the race, it becomes much harder for whatever other non-Romney candidate might emerge, because the anti-Romney vote is suddenly split in two.

If Paul can continue to take 15 or 20 percent of the vote — or even just 10 percent — in these contests, the threshold of victory for Romney in that three-way race is much lower than it would be in a head-to-head race.

And the more Romney keeps finishing first, the more it will be clear that he’s the presumptive nominee, which will probably only increase the margin of his victories. At that point, it will likely be impossible for the non-Romney candidate to continue to fund and run a real campaign.

Remember 2008, when Mike Huckabee seemed to be sticking around even as the race was pretty clearly coming down to Romney and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)? Huckabee’s continued presence in that race — particularly on Super Tuesday — similarly split the anti-McCain vote and probably ruined any chance Romney had of overtaking the frontrunner.

This time, Romney could very well be on the winning side of that equation.

Despite deep differences on a range of issues, Romney and Paul became friends in 2008, the last time both ran for president. So did their wives, Ann Romney and Carol Paul. The former Massachusetts governor compliments the Texas congressman during debates, praising Paul’s religious faith during the last one, in Jacksonville, Fla. Immediately afterward, as is often the case, the Pauls and the Romneys gravitated toward one another to say hello.

The Romney-Paul alliance is more than a curious connection. It is a strategic partnership: for Paul, an opportunity to gain a seat at the table if his long-shot bid for the presidency fails; for Romney, a chance to gain support from one of the most vibrant subgroups within the Republican Party.

[…]

Romney’s aides are “quietly in touch with Ron Paul,” according to a Republican adviser who is in contact with the Romney campaign and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its internal thinking. The two campaigns have coordinated on minor things, the adviser said — even small details, such as staggering the timing of each candidate’s appearance on television the night of the New Hampshire primary for maximum effect.

I don’t know if this is true, but some of the facts are well-known, and if it’s true in any measure, the people who are supporting Ron Paul will be asked to shuffle across the convention floor to support Mitt Romney, not in exchange for the Vice Presidency, and not even for a cabinet posting, but for a speech for Paul and his Senator son in prime-time during the Republican National convention. Ron Paul supporters should know that this is the extent of the goal of this entire campaign, and that Mitt Romney has designs on their support. This is the reason that throughout these debates, and throughout the campaigns, Ron Paul hasn’t run one negative ad against Romney, and hasn’t even ruffled Mitt’s feathers in any of the debates. He has a strategic alliance, and he’s willing to carry out this charade in order to get a speaking platform for he and his son.

This leads me to several questions I have long suspected I would have to ask of the folks who have with such vigor and diligence supported Ron Paul, through thick and thin, and against the taunts of most of the other campaigns or candidates. Is that what you Paul supporters have been angling to achieve? Will you put down your Paul signs and pick up Romney placards instead? Is this the ultimate meaning of your money bombs, your poll-slamming, and all the other activities in which you have participated in support of Ron Paul’s agenda? How much influence do you now think Paul will wield in a Mitt Romney administration? Do you think Romney will legalize drugs? What about the military and foreign aid budgets? What of the commitment to the Constitution? What becomes of eliminating the Federal Reserve? What will you do when you discover that not only has your candidate undercut you, but that all he managed for your trouble were twenty-four dollars worth of costume conservatism?

There you go.

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

This entry was posted on February 6, 2012 at 12:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized.
Tagged: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, sellouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

26 Responses to “Ron Paul Is Mitt Romney’s Best Friend. Here’s Why.”

Travsaid

Nice try with the propaganda. Who do you think you’re talking to to? Not only is this article an insult to Ron Paul’s family and his supporters, I am going to print this article out right when I’m done sending this, I am going in the bathroom for my morning number 2 and I’m going to WIPE my behind with this terrible jibberish. We will NEVER vote for anybody BUT Ron Paul! Maybe the rest of the Republican establishment better START supporting Paul. Isn’t there too great of a risk that if he decided to run 3rd party and take all those votes with him, guarantees an Obama victory? I’d say since Ron Paul can guarantee a victory for the Democrats, he deserves more respect! If the Republican party want to win in November then I’d say they HAVE to give Paul the nomination over Romney so then Ron Paul can tare Obama apart on all the unconstitutional decisions he’s made since he got in office. Ron Paul can change things is a way that Romney can not! Nobody supports Romney anyways. NOBODY! We know the fraud is going on and it’s very obvious. So take your propaganda elsewhere because we are not moving!

I’d recommend using a very thin paper, like onionskin, if you don’t want to clog your toilet, Travis. Like all Paulian ideas, this one seems poorly thought through. Unless its intent is to provide amusement for others.

As for your demand that we “take your propaganda elsewhere,” you do realize that this blog is private property… property that does not belong to you?

Chris, I will give you one warning. Read the posting policy. We do not tolerate abusive posting, fact-free posting, off-topic posting, etc. Private property means private property and we do not appreciate people who deface it.

MarkHsaid

I have wondered for some time if the purpose of all the “conservative” Republican candidates wasn’t to split their vote, so Romney could appear stronger. Even recently when Donald Trump said he was considering an Independent run, but then turned on a dime a few days later, it appeared he had been bought off by the Romney campaign. They don’t like real competition, just a bunch of ‘conservatives’ who split that vote.

Ron Paul seems like the only one who wants real change. I’ll just write him in if I have to. I don’t buy that wasted vote crap in this case. I call it voting for the guy I believe in. The guy who walks the walk. The message is too important to turn my back on.
It’s bigger than Ron Paul now.
He may grow old and fade away but the next real man to pick up the flag will have my support.
I no longer tolerate liars and crooks in government. America deserve better and the world deserves a better America.

You’re welcome to vote for whoever you feel best represents your interests. But I wonder whether you really know Ron Paul. It’s a shame when people get duped, whether they are duped by Obama’s promises or Ron Paul’s practiced act of being plain ol’ Dr. Paul

If I found out he was a scoundrel I’d be crushed. I’m in this for keeps.
I read that and didn’t see any real evidence to sway me away from voting for him. I look at what he has said and done, how he’s lived his life and at his voting record, and see that he’s the real thing, not just another phony like these other guys. They’ve already proven themselves unworthy.
Why doesn’t the media just tell us if he’s a crook instead of saying, from day one, he has no chance and blacking him out all the time? Seem a little odd? It seems ridiculous that I’d have to defend this man but here I am, just a factory worker who woke up and started paying attention, doing just that.
I love my country. I want to make it better with small government, low taxes, more jobs, sound economy, a restored constitution, better education, a free press, etc…
It hurts to see what looks like a nation sleeping right through the theft of everything they love. I’m I really a kook?

Curt, I’m sure your sincere. I too love my country, want the smallest, cheapest, government consistent with public safety and a compassionate society, more respect for the Constitution, better education, a free press, and so on. But I have to tell you: it’s times like this, when things look like they’re going to hell, when dangerous demagogues arise and exploit the fears and the dreams of ordinary people.

I do find it grimly amusing that the media do their best to squash Paul. Those media, it has to be remembered, are controlled by a handful of enormously wealthy individuals, all of whom are conservative (the NY Times is less conservative than, say, News Corp, but its owners dislike Paul because he is more favorable to Palestinians than they would like). Paul gets the short end because he spoils the Republican brand.

But just because the media are down on someone does not make that person a good person. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Paul is a crook. But I do think, and I think that I have presented some evidence, to show that he’s concealing what he actually believes. The Ron Paul newsletters, which carried his signature and which he now claims he didn’t read, contain some seriously kooky ideas, ideas that one finds only in the fever swamps of the very, very right… like the Montana Freemen and the Huttaree militia. And probably most disturbing to me is his association with the John Birch Society. The JBS is like a Bolshevik organization, in that it is willing to do and say anything for the cause. It was read out of the Republican Party by mainline conservatives like William F. Buckley.

Tonight, Ron Paul’s aide boasted that they will win the delegates for the caucus states, even though they lost the vote!. (Basically, they stayed until after the end of the close of the caucuses, when delegates to the county/state convention get selected, and they took the place of delegates for other candidates) Now, if Ron Paul were the real deal, he would refuse to get delegates in this sneaky, though technically legal, way. Winning through this sort of stratagem betrays contempt for free elections.

I don’t think Paul is the real deal. He’s crapping all over the idea of representative (republican) democracy, even if it is legal.

Travsaid

It’s rediculous to even insinuate that the Ron Paul campaign is cheating by keeping his supporters educated and well informed about how the delegates work. EVERYBODY knows when it comes to all things main stream that have been covering the elections, have stacked the deck against him. It’s safe to say that the media has blatantly LIED about Ron Paul to damage his credibility. You can’t use some newsletters that were put out 20 yrs ago as evidence to the claims that he is a racist. That would never hold up in a court if law. Ron Paul said he disavows them and didn’t know what they said when they were put out. It’s pretty slanderous to label someone a racist when there is NO PROOF. Ron Paul has been in enough video over the past 30+ years and if you can’t find one single clip with him in it, talking in this way but you still believe he is a racist, then you need serious help. The brainwashing you have endured in your life has seriously affected your logic if you can still believe he is a racist and not the Good Dr. Paul the rest of us know he is.
Another thing, the obvious voter fraud going on, especially in Iowa and Nevada, 2 states every Ron Paul supporter, believes he had more votes than we were told. I mean, why take the ballots to an undisclosed location, count them in secret? There was so much shady crap going on in both states surrounding the ballots that they didn’t even try and hide, it’s no wonder people think we were lied to and he was cheated. The fact that people who were at these places reporting all Ron Paul’s supporters made up the majority gives more ammo to those who believe he had the most votes.
I could sit here all day bringing up things that have been intentionally done, to try and sabotage Ron Paul’s campaign.
So to sit and complain or insinuate Ron Paul is doing something wrong for educating his supporters is f*****g stupid. That’s the difference between a Ron Paul and a Mitt, Newt or Santorum, he cares enough about his supporters to actually educate them on important things and that is just one of the reasons he gets our support. Ending the Wars is the number 1 reason we support him so don’t forget that. It’s your business and your right to support any other candidate but there is just 1 thing you should understand before u throw your support behind a candidate promising, more wars, death and destruction. So always know, when you support and vote for war lovers, you make the things in this video possible and it’s partially your fault.
ROON PAUL 2012!!!!!

[Editor: This link looks hinky to me. As far as I can tell, it is not to a Youtube video. While I don’t think that it’s malware, I can’t recommend clicking on it.]

Travis, a presidential election is not a court of law. It is a job interview.

If Paul doesn’t care about being sure that the delegates to the convention are representative of Republican primary/caucus-goers desires, how seriously will he take public opinion once he is elected? There’s a name for political leaders who don’t care what the people think: tyrants.

I do agree with you that there seems to be some vote stealing going on by others. The results out of Iowa, in which Romney was announced the winner and then it turned out that Santorum had received more votes, are very suspicious. Crookedness is endemic to Republican politics.

In terms of rhetorical technique, throwing in the question of whether Ron Paul is racist is very interesting, since it hasn’t been mentioned on this thread. This thread is about whether Paul is cooperating with Romney.

However, let me say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If Paul produced newsletters containing racist statements 20 years ago, even if no recent videos have appeared with him saying something ugly, it does not look good on his resume as he applies for the job of president.

Finally, please read the posting policy. I am cutting you some slack, because I get the sense that you’re a kid with not a lot of political sense. But we do have standards for debate. Those do not include calling people brainwashed or mentally ill.

Please point us dummies toward some places to get some political sense. I’m 43, white, Christian, middle class, yada yada. Gore frightened me enough to vote for Bush who frightened me enough to vote for Obama.
I now spend many hours reading and watching documentaries to enlighten myself.
Now my opinion of our government is pretty low and I feel both main parties have been infiltrated by something ugly and evil. I was never indoctrinated into this system so I’ve just really formed my political views over the last ten years.
I came to the screw em both belief in the last 3 years. Now I don’t even like the word “politics” or “political”. Isn’t that sad that I spent all that time to arrive right back where I started? Only, no, not quite. I see one more chance. A chance to bring in some men and women who won’t bow to the fed, the imf, u.n., w.t.o., world bank, Chase, Bank of America, etc… A chance to rewrite what “political sense” means. I think our people are waking up so pissing us off is making less and less political sense. I hope and pray.

In fact, I think that in your heart is the source of information you are looking for tp get some political sense. Our media makes us afraid. They literally sell fear. Political organization use fear to gain power. Americans are scared about a million things that never, or almost never happen, while they’re not afraid of things that are right before their eyes. Things like decaying roads and bridges, stagnant wages, chronically high unemployment, expensive wars that never seem to end, and so on.

I count myself as a follower of Jesus, too. One of the things that pains me is how shallow the roots of Christianity are in this country. We beg God for miracles, but don’t recognize His hands in the miracles of modern medicine. We beg God for wisdom and understanding yet despise learning and attack scientists when they do their work to reveal truth.

We claim to follow the Prince of Peace– we have more churches per capita than any other nation–but we are also the nation that spends half of what is spent in the world on weapons, the nation with proportionately the most people in prison, the only nation in the industrialized world with mass poverty. So, with sadness, I doubt that more than one person in ten who calls himself or herself a Christian has really heard the gospel.

So, ask your heart, “Would Jesus be afraid?” Ask yourself if evil really has any power over one who believes that this life is not the end, people who believe that God will reward those who are faithful in loving even their enemies. It is not enough to scrunch up your eyes really hard and say, “I believe.” Believing means living according to one’s understanding.

The second thing one can do is to stop listening to the fear-sellers, those who peddle hate and division. There have been some good academic studies that people who listen to cable news know the least about what is happening in the world, while those who don’t watch TV news at all often know more about what is happening. I participate in this blog not because I expect to change anyone’s mind, but because I read widely. I try to understand what is going on and to accurately predict events in the future. Writing those predictions down helps keep me honest.

The point is that most people listen to news to confirm their own biases–as if that could change the outcome of events. If one listens to news and checks to see whether what they say actually happens, one will find that the US news media is very confused about what is happening.

One small example. In the Middle East, there are competing groups. Not just Sunni and Shia, but Alawites, Coptic Christians, Orthodox Christians, Druse, Ultraorthodox Jews, Reformed Jews, etc. In some countries, there are other affiliations, tribal affiliations, national affiliations, and so on, that are much deeper than religious affiliations. Many times their arguments with people in their own group are much deeper than any arguments they have with us. But the news media have no knowledge of history and they report as if all Muslims were identical. They are unable to predict what will happen because they have no clue about what is happening.

Well, that’s my advice: Seek in your heart for wisdom, don’t allow yourself to be controlled, and don’t rely on any news source. Read many–including ones whose political beliefs you disagree with– and see which ones are accurate.

Exactly. If you read a wide variety of sources, you can do a sort of triangulation to discover the blind spots of each, as well as what they do right. It’s kinda like when one goes to weather.gov to look at weather radar maps — oftentimes ground clutter impedes the resolution of local radar, yet radar from a hundred or so miles further away can see what is obscured on the local radar picture.

It’s certainly possible, MED. Paul is of an age that if he’s going to accomplish something, it has to be soon.

There has been speculation that he will pressure the eventual nominee for a favor for his son: the vice-presidency or some cabinet position. There would probably be less resistance on that than for Paul himself simply because Rand hasn’t created the same track record of kooky statements.

As far as strategy, Paul seems to be content to pile up delegates in the caucus states, while letting other candidates take the primary states. Even in the primary states, if his operatives have penetrated the party structure, they could end up as delegates. This matters a lot in the many states where delegates are not bound.

There are something like 500 caucus state delegates. There are something like 1500 total delegates. Of the 117 superdelegates, you can bet that none of them will be for RP. So, it’s difficult to see a winning strategy based purely on the caucus states. The best I see him doing is about 500 delegates, and that’s assuming he ends up as the anti-Romney when Santorum inevitably implodes. If Santorum holds on long enough to accumulate over 300 delegates, the probability of a brokered convention rises.

David, are you seriously attempting to differentiate “kooks” and “Republicans”?

I think you mean that the country club kooks won’t let the libertarian kooks have power over money (the religious kooks and the defense kooks, they’re ok with).

But look at the evidence. At least some of the country club kooks, people like the Koch brothers, are from the same sect of the Kooks as Ron Paul (the Kochs themselves have had some dustups with Paul, but not over money philosophy). A lot of very wealthy people believe that the problem with the US is that credit is too easy, that we should return to a gold standard, that the Federal Reserve is fouling up the Magical Market. Ron Paul has a billionaire supporting him: Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal.

A look at the CNP membership rolls should convince one that there is no dividing line between…eh…Austrians… and country clubbers. Easy credit is only necessary for industries like manufacturing and agriculture. The oil industry, as an example doesn’t really care about credit, at least until there’s a Depression and no one can buy its product.

They would have no trouble with a Ron Paul presidency… until it actually happened, of course.

David W.said

O.K., I should differentiate between Republicans who have a grip on reality and those who don’t. The Koch’s aren’t climate change denialists because they dispute the science, they’re denialists because they sell oil. When it comes to their own self interest the Koch’s are entirely reality-based. Ron Paul on the other hand has this kooky, fetishistic idea about making a single commodity the basis for all currency to better control inflation. Someone might want to inform Paul about what happened to the Spanish Empire after they took all that gold from America.

David W.said

Back when gold was one of the few things that was transportable and imperishable, it made sense for merchants to use it at times in exchange for other commodities. But we’ve always done business that didn’t involve actual gold in the accounting, which is all that money actually is – a unit of account. Why haul gold around when you can just electronically transfer credits and debits? Admittedly, Marley’s Ghost just wouldn’t be the same without the chains he forged in life to best keep all his precious gold, so there is that… ;-)

David W. asks, “Why haul gold around when you can just electronically transfer credits and debits?”

Some MF Global customers can tell you about electronic transfers of credit.

There is a well-founded fear that if there are insufficient controls over the creation of money, someone will create money who is not authorized to do so. That seems to be part of what happened at MF Global. Leverage was a large part of the problem behind the financial crisis.

Quantitative easing is basically an untested strategy, and there’s a real fear that it will turn into money-printing, with the accompanying inflation and general crisis. It is not at all irrational to hold hard assets to weather inflationary pressures.

What is irrational is to base a monetary system on the mining of gold. I explained why here

David W.said

You’ll get no argument from me about the asset inflation in housing that took place from 2000-2005, but as that boom made millions for some the bust left millions in debt when the housing bubble burst. It’s an all too familiar tale in the history of capitalism. It’s not the creation of money that’s the problem, but a balance sheet crises that’s paralyzing the economy. That’s what happened during the Great Depression of the 1930s and it took massive state spending to finally put an end to the deflation of that decade.

David says, “It’s not the creation of money that’s the problem, but a balance sheet crises that’s paralyzing the economy.”

Um.

You know what borrowing on margin is, David?

Suppose I have $1M in a safe asset, like T-bills. I can probably find someone who will lend me money at 100% of face value, if the loan is secured by the T-bills. Now let’s say I use the money to buy $1M in stocks. I can borrow probably $500,000 on margin and buy a house. Up until recently, I could borrow up to the full amount of equity or even more. But suppose I can only borrow half my equity, or $250,000. And with this, I buy some futures.

Net worth is $1M. But that $1M has been levered up into $2.75M in assets.

But look at the quality of that net worth. If I fail to pay the secured loan, if the stocks drop in value, if the home suffers an uninsured flood, or if the futures go down in value, suddenly, that balance sheet looks a lot different. Suppose the stocks and futures drop by 50% and my home suffers $375,000 in uninsured damage. Suddenly the balance sheet looks like:

Assets: $1.75M Liabilities: $1.75M Net worth: $0.

All it takes is a sneeze and the house of cards falls down. What you would call a balance sheet crisis is only possible because of the creation of money through borrowing on margin.

Instead of the 2.75:1 leverage of the example, some banks had leverage of 20:1 or 30:1.

David W.said

There’s a difference between creating money and creating an obligation. What was actually inflated by the housing bubble was debt, not money, which is why deflation is now the real problem we face, not inflation. That’s why writing down that debt is a necessity if we’re going to get out of the economic pit we’re now in.

A consequence of this will be the end of houses as piggy banks, which isn’t such a bad thing since homes are just another commodity that fluctuates in value.